The Photo Cookbook - Simple & Delicious Review

Cooking has become a recent hobby of mine. I guess I’ve just gotten tired of resorting to fast food when I’m feeling lazy, which is almost every night. Cooking a good meal can sometimes take a lot of effort. The Photo Cookbook – Simple & Delicious aims to make cooking easier for simple folks like myself. With high-resolution photos and easy-to-follow instructions, this new iOS recipe book is a handy tool for cooking novices like myself. However, all of these great features come at a high price.

The Photo Cookbook greets users with a beautiful interface displaying 60 recipes broken down into different categories. There are currently only four categories available: Appetizers & Co, Pasta, Pizza & Co, Entrees, and Deserts. Tapping a recipe opens up a new display that shows a large picture of all the ingredients needed. Tapping any ingredient within the picture will bring up a more detailed description about that ingredient. This is a feature I really like since I don’t always know what to look for when choosing my ingredients. Scrolling down the page will review all the necessary steps to complete the recipe. The instructions are very easy to follow. They are short, but detailed enough for someone like me to understand how to manage through it.

The Photo Cookbook’s interface offers a few more features within each recipe. If users find the need to record some notes or ideas for a certain recipe, there is a notes section available to do this. There is also the option to email the recipe to friends and family. Unfortunately this is the only social sharing option available. With social networking as big as it is these days, I’m surprised this app didn’t build in Twitter and Facebook sharing support.

Priced at $4.99, The Photo Cookbook is a little overpriced for what it offers in my opinion. There are only 60 recipes available and I think that similar recipes can be found online at no cost. While the interface and layout are really attractive, I just don’t think that the content is anything too special that would merit such a price tag. There are other versions of The Photo Cookbook for baking and even cocktails that the same developer has published, and each of them is priced at $4.99. If all the versions were rolled up into one app, I could see myself paying that much for this app.

If money is not an issue, then I’d definitely recommend The Photo Cookbook – Simple & Delicious to any beginning chef that wants some nice and simple recipes. However, if price is any obstacle, I’d have to say that there are plenty of alternatives out there that will get the job done just as well.